Quick and Dirty - Easy-to-Learn, Quick-to-Play Games

Brain Space
A lot of the time, the decision between a...

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Oddly enough, I find myself more in favor of the heavies and lights. It’s the stuff in the middle that I put the jaundice eye to.

My theory is that I set my expectations appropriately for big games, and give myself the time and patience to learn them. With midweight games I want to dive right in.

I am more and more of the opinion that board games as a medium have certain strengths, and overloading games with lots of levers and options simply to create brain burn is not leaning into the strengths at all. All that upkeep and balancing of tracks and different rules slapped on to various mini games, all create distance between players as they focus on their own puzzley bit, and breaks any illusion the game has as rules need to be looked up and checked again. What we have is an analogue medium designed to be played around a table, basically. Games that make best use of that situation are the ones that keep things simple and pull players together. It's not because of not having the energy or brain space - you can still create games that require hyper focus - but that's when the medium is being used best, imo. Games that enable players to forget the rules (as in, internalise them quickly so that the space is clear for all and you don't have to think about them), and keep players occupied with each other - they are the best. And you find games like that are often a little quicker.